As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Pull It

One of the more amusing mythologies of the 9/11 denial movement is the claim that the phrase "pull it" is an industry term for demolishing a building with explosives. This was created, of course, so that Larry Silverstein could have casually confessed to being involved in the plot during an interview with PBS. There is, however, absolutely nothing to show that this is in fact true, but that has not kept the conspiracy geeks from repeating it to themselves so many times that it self-referentially becomes widespread knowledge that the term "pull it" refers to controlled demolition.

If you ask any CD expert though, you will find out that it doesn't. Brett Blanchard, from implosionworld.com explains:

We have never once heard the term "pull it" being used to refer to the explosive demolition of a building, and neither has any blast team we've spoken with. The term is used in conventional demolition circles, to describe the specific activity of attaching long cables to a pre-weakened building and maneuvering heavy equipment (excavators, bulldozers, etc.) to "pull" the frame of the structure over onto its side for further dismantlement.

But hey, who are you going to believe, someone who has been working in the industry for years, or a retired philosophy professor?

Four demolition and engineering experts tell Popular Mechanics that pull it is not slang for controlled demolition. "I've never heard of it," says Jon Magnusson of Magnusson Klemencic Associates.

Ron Dokell, retired president of Olshan Demolishing Company, says the same thing. Mark Loizeaux of Controlled Demolition, Inc. adds that the only way he can imagine the term being used is in reference to a process where the legs of a structure are precut and attached to cables, and then large machines are used to literally pull the building to the ground.

Now 9/11 Myths has come up with an excellent example of this in action. From a video of the demolition of WTC 6:

Worker #1: Oh, we’re getting ready to pull building six. Luis Mendes: We have to be very careful how we demolish building six. We were worried about the building six coming down and demolishing the slurry wall, so we wanted that particular building to fall within a certain area.

Worker #1: We’ve got the cables attached in four different locations... ... Now they’re pulling [gestures to vehicles] pulling the building to the north. It’s not every day you try to pull down a eight storey building with cables”

OK, so let's summarize. The conspiracy theorists have absolutely nothing but their own religious fervor to show that "pull it" means to blow up a building. We, on the other hand, have multiple expert and reliable sources to show that it does not. So why exactly do these "truth seekers" keep on believing this?

This is a great example of what's dangerous about the 9/11 CTs. They can force the discussion onto areas of trivia, and away from the catastrophic flaws in their own logic.

Any discussion of Larry Silverstein ought to focus solely on the fatal stupidity of the conspiracy theory: that he ordered his own property destroyed on national TV, and then successfully collected billions of insurance dollars on it.

And not only does this require us to discuss what CTs want to discuss, it requires to accept all the crazy assumptions that are necessary to get to that point.

It requires us to assume that that building owners have the authority to issue orders to the Fire Department. It requires us to assume that he couldn't have collected insurance unless the building fell down. It requires us to assume that destroying the building would be preferable to leaving it alone, since the CTs argue the building took no damage. It requires us to assume that an instant demolition job would have been feasable. And above all else, it requires us to assume that Larry Silverstein's actions on 9/11 were of any relevance whatsoever.

Actually anytime we write about the actual evidence regarding 9/11 we get very little response from the conspiracy theorists. If we do a post making fun of Dylan or something, THEN they start posting that we do not want to discuss the evidence.